Have you ever thought about just how intricate some of your voice over work is?
Whether it's painting words, deliberate markings made in your script or the meticulousness of audio production, this work can be quite intense!
Find out more in today's VOX Daily.
It's All in the Details
Many professions require attention to detail and being thorough. Being a voice actor and audio engineer is definitely one of them!
I was just thinking about how much calculation and precision is involved in the various aspects of voice acting and audio production. What you do as a professional voice over artist, let alone audio producer, is so very intricate. Just as a spider spins a web designed for a very specific purpose, as voice artists you have to spin a story and provide a solid structure through the manipulation of your voice, time and wave forms.
When you think about it, the art of voice acting and producing is quite the balancing act, regardless of project length. Even productions that last mere seconds, like promo for instance, can pack a significant amount of nuance and deliberately executed choices. Here's a list I created featuring twelve skills required to do your job.
As a Voice Artist and Producer, You Need To:
๏ Know where you are going before you get there
๏ Understand the copy
๏ Commit to a choice when interpreting the copy
๏ Set the stage for your read
๏ Use physicality to enable or enhance your performance
๏ Pace out the read
๏ Breathe properly
๏ Identify where breathing is required (and where it isn't)
๏ Paint or color your words
๏ Build the arc of a phrase
๏ Draw to a cadence effectively
๏ Choose where one thought ends and another begins
How Have You Been Putting This Into Practice?
What would you say has been the most intricate voice over job you have ever done? This could be intricate vocally, artistically or technically. If you'd like, comment with a few selections or add more skills to the list! It will be interesting to hear about your work and the complexities contained within them.
Best wishes,
Stephanie
©iStockphoto.com/denisvrublevski
Intricacy sums it up so well, both in performance and recording. The fun is in taking care of detail at the same time as giving rein to emotion. Few jobs offer quite so much scope. It applies to breathing, prepping copy and to after-production where a single syllable (or quite a few of them!) may benefit from a tweak in level or pitch. For me, my most intricate post-prod has been voicing and mixing a new character demo aimed at Voices.com.
Best wishes,
Howard Ellison (Devon UK).
Here here true!!!!
Hi, can you write an article about what you mean by each of these terms? Especially building an arc of a phrase?
Wendi Russo
Hi Wendi,
Thank you for asking! I'd be happy to explore some of these topics in greater detail. I'm not sure if you clicked through any of the links but many of the listed "intricacies" contained links to related articles.
We are very fortunate to have a number of podcasts too at Voice Over Experts that focus on technique and artistic interpretation that you might be interested in. Here's a link to the show:
http://podcasts.voices.com/voiceoverexperts/
Best wishes,
Stephanie
Sometimes, given the copy, I find cadence/breathing can be one of the trickier aspects.